 |
| Heritage Museums and Gardens, Sandwich MA |
I am drawn
to city museums. I like a city museum when I travel. The City of Amsterdam Museum helped me get oriented, explore
the city, and dive deeper into the city and its patterns. I like a city museum
for where I live. The Mill City Museum located where St Anthony Falls,
the Stone Arch Bridge, and mill ruins meet, the museum is about this place,
where and how I spend my days. Still I wish there were more city museums to
invigorate cities, connect citizens, welcome visitors, and for me to visit.
Michael
Spock’s characterization of children’s museums as being for someone makes me wonder why
more museums don’t also see themselves as being for (and about) someone: for
and about us, residents and citizens of this city. When I read, Happiness, Design, and the Future of Museums, on the Center for the Future of Museums blog a few months back,
I felt my hope for more city museums was closer to being realized.
Recently,
when staff I was meeting with began describing how they saw their museum’s
future, I couldn’t help but envision a city museum for them. Their reimagined museum is for children, youth and families, residents and tourists. It intends
to put down roots in its current location, a transitioning neighborhood at the
edge of two very different but old neighborhoods; one is home to immigrant
families new to the region and the other is home to established and more prosperous
families. The views out the museum windows frame the harbor and bridges in one
direction and hills in the other. These views are livelier and more direct
connections to the beauty, industry, history, culture, sports, and place of the
city than the chosen list of focus areas: STEM, arts, literacy, and history. They were describing a city museum.
Collaborating for the Future
Every city has its
challenges. Competing demands on limited resources, population changes,
employment shifts, environmental pressures, and diverse perspectives change a
city or town. However, a city or community with engaged citizenry and strong
connections, can weather these challenges.
Communities also have
libraries, museums, cultural organizations, artists, activists, designers, enthusiasts,
and advocates with knowledge of, love for, and aspirations on behalf of their
community. When museums see themselves as serving a community, they can be part
of transforming a city into a better, possible version of itself by
collaborating with cultural, civic, and learning partners.
City museums know that
people make cities. Certainly, different versions of the city exist for its
many inhabitants. Yet, the city is also a strong, shared context for people of
diverse backgrounds and experiences and container for their lives. Inspired to find ways for community
members to express how they see themselves in the city and in the museum, city
museums focus on connecting people, not only on collecting objects. They
facilitate people finding personal connections, sharing stories, revealing
hidden heritage, and interpreting place. For city museums audience, citizens,
participants, and visitors are the same.
Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only
because, and only when, they are created by everybody.
― Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
(1961)
Museum in the City, City in the Museum
A city museum is not a
replication or imitation of parts of the city, a display of its economic activities,
or a showcase of cherished landmarks. Rather it is an interpretation,
investigation, or even an unwrapping, of the city that reveals its personality and
promise through the eyes, experiences, lives, hopes, and connections of its
citizens and visitors.
A city museum is as much
about the present and the future as it is about the past; as much about the
change it hopes to realize as the changes that have occurred over the decades. A
city museum is where traditional heritage and contemporary heritage meet and
mix. It is where the community meets and mourns a tragedy and gathers to
celebrate a victory.
An occasional exhibit or
program is inadequate in distilling and defining the city and engaging members
of the community in meaningful ways. But exhibits, projects, programs,
installations, events, social media, and partnerships can be ways to open the museum
to the city and its people. With partnerships, participation, and creativity from across the
community, these exhibits, events, programs, and installations may be created
in schools, community centers, and on the street and offer a decidedly original
turn.
The city museum is
inescapably local and decidedly place-based. If an exhibit is about bridges,
it’s about that bridge seen through the window–the High Bridge, the Aerial Lift
Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge. If an exhibit is about water, it’s about this river
or lake, its currents, its flooding, its water quality. Neighborhoods organize
for the local bird and bug counts. The artists and makers that are showcased
are from many neighborhoods. The weather exhibit is about the lake effect snow the
city knows well or why it’s cooler by the lake.
The city museum has all
the challenges of being inclusive, diverse, and accessible that every museum does–and
more. It issues louder invitations to participate and it challenges itself to
listen to, amplify, and learn from more and new voices. This is a museum that
organizes itself to be guided by the creativity and ingenuity within the
community. This museum’s everydayness makes it extraordinary.
Taking on the City
Some museums are taking on
the city the way Jane Jacobs took on the city in her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
They shift their visions; incorporate a strong contemporary perspective into an
historic focus; open their doors, and explore contemporary heritage. The Museum of Vancouver has issued a bold vision,
“To inspire a socially connected, civically engaged city.” When the Historical
Museum Rotterdam became Museum Rotterdam, its one-word name change reflected a
major shift in focus following extensive and deliberate effort.
The Museum of Art and History has been working thoughtfully, actively, and nimbly with its Santa
Cruz community on creating opportunities for citizens to bond and bridge and
developing a theory of change for their vision.
The Museum of the City presents a very
different model, a virtual model, for a city museum. Several other city museums
are visited in a 2013 issue of Journal of Museum Education on Urban Design and Learning. A related perspective is explored in Cities, Museums, and Soft Power, by Gail Lord and Ngaire Blankenburg.
These are some of the
city museums finding ways to be of
greater use to their city contributing to its resilience, sustainability, and
vitality. One city museum may be combining scholarship, stewardship, and
sustainability; another may become part of the city infrastructure for
wellbeing. As their journeys reveal, museums can re-imagine themselves without
abandoning their core. In identifying and strengthening connections to their
cities, they shift slightly, gradually, and strategically. Such shifts are not
limited to history museums. A children’s museum, a science center, an art
museum, or natural history museum can be a museum of, about, for, and with the city.
Perhaps these stories of
change and possibility will inspire more museums in being deliberate about opening
up to the city, letting it in, both reflecting it and shaping it.
Related Resources
• City Museums and Urban Learning,
Journal of Museum Education. Vol. 38, N.: March 2009
• Favorite Places in the City: Mad About Helsinki post by Rainey Tisdale
Related Museum Notes Posts
Thanks for mentioning our work in Santa Cruz, Jeanne.
ReplyDeleteIn doing this work, it has made me think a lot about how individual professionals advance their careers. If you want to be of/by/for a city, it's important that staff aren't just passing through that city. Staff don't have to be locals born and raised, but they should have a specific love for and commitment to the city where they work. I find this is antithetical to the way many people pursue museum careers--many people feel that their only choice is to move every few years. This weakens institutions, not just because of turnover, but because of local commitment. We've ended up shifting our hiring practices to prioritize this local commitment as a key part of what we seek.
Nina, you have made an excellent point in several respects. Being a city museum requires a wholehearted commitment to the city on the part of staff (and, I would add, trustees), whether they are transplants or born and raised there. Attachment, enthusiasm, curiosity, knowledge, and pride in the city need to be present and in abundance. Your point also underscores the importance of following a museum's important ideas "upstream." There are many and less obvious manifestations of a museum's core ideas that need to be understood and played out. Recruiting, hiring, and retaining staff support what a museum values and provide the expertise it wants to have. We think of that more readily when looking for a love of history or art or science and less about other interests. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteHi Jeanne. Great topic = I'm an urban designer who ended up working in a museum and BIG believer in how museums can learn from cities in creating themselves as places (place-making practice) and vice versa, how museums could contribute to urban policy. The Guggenheim City Lab probably my dream model. Here is a rough blog that I have since made into an article, love to share it when published - https://designingyen.wordpress.com/2015/08/09/museums-place-making-my-experience-manifesto/
ReplyDeleteYen you do bring an interesting perspective with your urban planning background. I agree that there's a lot museums can learn from cities and that cities can learn from museums. Both can be more deliberate and imaginative about being embedded in place. Thank you for sharing the blog you wrote on this topic. BTW I sometimes think that if I hadn't gone into museum work, I might have been an urban planner.
ReplyDeleteThose interested in exploring city-museum connections, community engagement, urban design might be interested in checking out the Guggenheim Lab that Yen mentioned: http://www.bmwguggenheimlab.org. The Lab describes itself as "part urban think tank, part community center and pubic gathering space..." which makes it a hybrid very much like city museums.
ReplyDeleteGreat Inspiration and hope!
ReplyDelete